2 new principals hit elementary stage

Thursday

PANAMA CITY — Two elementary schools will get new principals for this upcoming year.

PANAMA CITY — Two elementary schools will get new principals for this upcoming year.

After committee recommendations, the school district superintendent appointed Carol Ann Whitehurst as principal at Deer Point Elementary and Amy Harvey as principal at Northside Elementary. Both principals are former assistant principals.

“The neat thing is that those principals were picked by faculty, staff and parents,” Superintendent Bill Husfelt said. “They selected those individuals to lead those schools and that gave (Whitehurst and Harvey) a plus right away. They got who they wanted … so I’m excited for them.”

Whitehurst is the former assistant principal at Hiland Park Elementary. She began as a teacher in Bay County in 1993 and became J.R. Arnold High’s assistant principal in 2004. She also served as the assistant principal at Tommy Smith Elementary for two years.

“The nice thing is that I see the whole kindergarten to 12th grade continuum and I know where our kids need to be at each step of progression,” Whitehurst said. “I have five children of my own, so I am very aware of post secondary education and that falling behind is a crippling thing to happen to children.”

In academic year 2012-2013, the percentage of students that passed the state exam at Deer Point exceeded several other district schools and improved, sometimes doubled the previous year’s percentage. However, not including academic year 2012-2013, the school maintained a C school grade for the last two consecutive academic years.

School grades for 2012-2013 have not been released yet.

“I think it was very clear that they were strong in the language arts, reading and writing. Their challenge was in the area of math, but this last year, they aced math also,” Whitehurst said.

“At the end of the year, I think (the Florida Department of Education) is anticipating a lot of school grades dropping at least one letter grade,” she said. However, “Deer Point is poised to possibly come up a grade, and that’ll be exciting.”

The school’s Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test 2.0 percentage of passing students in third, fourth and fifth grades saw tremendous leaps; each grade doubled or nearly doubled its year prior percentage.

“I’m thrilled,” Whitehurst said. “Deer Point is not only a fabulous facility; the faculty that it has built is up to date on the latest research. They’ve made great strides at building a learning community where the child is the center of what’s going on.”

She added: “If it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it. Rather than going in and changing a lot of things, I plan to go into a school that’s doing a lot of things right and [I will] continue to support them to do those things that are right.”

In addition to a new principal, Deer Point also will receive 80 to 100 new students who were zoned to the area, as well as a new assistant principal, Serenity Anderson.

Northside Elementary

At Northside Elementary, Harvey said she plans to continue leading the school in focusing on academic growth as state standards become more rigorous.

“We’re going to continue to monitor individual student data very closely and making sure we provide teachers with the resources they need, as well as the interventions that the students need,” Harvey said.

Harvey, an area native, served as an assistant administrator for the past two years at Northside Elementary and is a former mathematics teacher at Jinks Middle School and third grade teacher at Lynn Haven Elementary.

Although Northside’s third- and fifth-grade passing percentage for the FCAT excelled in recent years, last year the school’s fourth-grade reading passing percentage fell to 55 from 70 percent and to 55 from 66 percent in mathematics.

As a result, the school has added extra classroom instruction positions that will increase classroom involvement, such as the intervention teacher position, “who specifically works with students who need that extra push each day,” she said.

However, she added, the school will continue to challenge third-, fourth- and fifth-graders “who are already on top of their game” by offering to them talented and gifted (TAG) classes.

“Northside is a very close-knit community school,” Harvey said. “We have a fabulous faculty (and) great parent support, and I’m looking forward to working with parents, our faculty and the community as we continue to move forward.”

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